He struck a match, and paused for a while to let it burn up. The rattling of the stockroom door grew increasingly ferocious, and he thought he heard a hinge tearing. Then he dropped the match into the bag of waste-paper, and watched it flare.

‘Are you ready?’ Mike asked Tony. ‘When I give the word, we open the door and go out yelling fire. And I mean yelling.’

‘I’m game,’ said Tony. He reached into his shirt pocket, took out his green plastic comb, and ran it with a stylised flick through his hair.

‘You look like a prince,’ said Gina, with friendly sarcasm. Tony realised what he had done, and grinned sheepishly.

‘It’s kind of a habit,’ he said.

The bag of trash was blazing hot and smoky now. Mike said, ‘You set?’ and before Tony could answer, he tugged open the office door, and kicked a shower of fiery paper into the store.

‘Fire!’ he screamed. ‘Fire! Fire! The place is on fire!’

‘Fire!’ yelled Tony, right behind him.

The effect on the crowds was immediate; and even more dreadful to Mick than the way in which they had first surged into the store. They let out a low quavering moan, like a wind on a seashore, and then that moan rose into a scream. Then, there was nothing but scrambling and pushing and a chopped-up shrieking which made him turn away towards the smoke and the burning paper with a grimace of disgust.

He didn’t feel holier-than-thou. He knew that if his own life was at risk in a fire, he’d be struggling to get out along with everybody else. But somehow the way that the crowds in his supermarket were tearing at each other to get to the exits, the way that women were wrenching at each other’s clothes, the way that men were screaming like small children, that all turned his stomach.

In a matter of a few minutes, the supermarket was almost empty. Two or three of the customers were too dazed or too hurt to walk. One man was lying face-down in the poultry freezer, his face against the ice, and it was plain that he was dead. Mike lifted him out, and laid him down on the floor. The man flopped back with his eyes open and the side of his cheek the colour of chilled turkey.

‘You think you should say some words?’ asked Tony, stepping beside him and looking down at the body.

Mike shook his head. ‘I’m a supermarket manager, not a priest.’

‘The doors are all locked now,’ said Tony. ‘I put the shutters down, too.’

‘Thanks, Tony,’ said Mike.

Curls of black burned paper drifted across the floor in the silent draught from the supermarket’s air-conditioning. There was a sharp odour of smoke in the air.

‘Did they go far?’ asked Mike. ‘Or can we expect them back?’